2008 - %3, March

This video appears to be from at least six weeks ago, but no one has really commented on it. Do we want a commander-in-chief who can't use a computer without assistance?

Washington is full of these guys, and it's so depressing. Larry Craig once said "I've never used the internet" (though we know he was lying). Ted Stevens thinks the internet is a series of tubes. Bush uses "the Google." I can't wait until we have a computer-literate generation of leaders in our Capitol.

Last week I examined the issue of gender-neutral language, and demurred at the tendency of the English language to fall back on male-dominant pronouns. Having poked around in a few writing style guides, I concluded that their rules negate the need to pander to linguists looking to strip our pronouns of any association with gender or sex. What my heterocentrist discussion—similar to that of most people—overlooked is how our current construct of language fails to accommodate or even recognize the marginalized transgender or "gender nonconforming" population. An article in New York Times Magazine featuring Rey, a transmale (born female but identifies as male) student, finds that on gender-sensitive campuses "students will often use gender-neutral pronouns like 'ze' and 'hir'—especially if they post on campus message boards." And the appearance of terms such as "gender nonconforming" and "genderqueer" in the article signifies that our relationship to gender is transforming.

" today many students who identify as trans are seeking not simply to change their sex but to create an identity outside or between established genders—they may refuse to use any gender pronouns whatsoever or take a gender-neutral name "

Mother Jones took a look at the evolution of gender-neutral pronouns in our March/April 2008 issue. So although our writing style guides allow us to circumvent the current, although heterocentrist, gender pronoun debate, in the future—as our discussions evolve—they might need an update as well.

By now, most of us have heard about how oil and gas drilling does a number on ecosystems. But it's no good for people, either. By way of the British Columbia online magazine the Tyee comes the story of Nuiqsut, a coastal community of 523 people in northern Alaska, about 100 miles west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Back in the late '90s, the oil and gas companies wooed the local Inupiat tribe with promises of jobs and minimal environmental impact—just 14 acres of tribal land would be affected by offshore and land drilling, they said. But now, 14 looks more like 500, and the community is a whole lot worse for the wear, says Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, mayor of Nuiqsut and also a health-care worker:

Last fall, former New York governor Eliot Spitzer appointed a task force to address the state's high rates of malpractice by hospitals and doctors. The task force was also charged with making recommendations for lowering doctors' med mal premiums, which soared 14 percent last year. The insurance industry and doctors' groups seized the opportunity to press for new restrictions on medical malpractice lawsuits, which they claim would reduce the premiums. As other states have learned, though, such limits usually only result in windfall profits for insurance companies while leaving injured patients with no recourse should their doctor, say, amputate the wrong leg.

Consumer groups in New York had long suspected Spitzer of siding with the doctors on this issue, largely because his brother is a downstate neurosurgeon. Their suspicions were confirmed when Spitzer stacked his medical liability task force with more than 20 representatives from the hospital, medical and insurance industries, while consumer protection and patient safety groups got just three spots. The consumer reps have largely been shut out of the task force deliberations, and despite repeated demands, they've been denied access to the insurance industry data, which supposedly justified the limits on lawsuits. Recently, the consumer members learned from local newspapers that the task force had drafted a major reform proposal that would be released soon. None of them had ever seen it.

Now that Spitzer has resigned, the groups are hoping his replacement, Governor David Patterson, will open up the process. In a letter today, representatives from NYPIRG, the Center for Justice and Democracy, the Center for Medical Consumers and others wrote Patterson, "We refuse to be mere window dressing, to be used as stage props to create the illusion of inclusion, while proposals that affect the life and safety of every health care consumer in our state are drafted in secret. We hope you will redirect the state's efforts towards reducing the deaths and injuries caused by a tiny fraction of the state's physicians, rather than enabling error, negligence, and malpractice to be subsidized by taxpayers."

In his column today, Paul Krugman notes that former Sen. Phil Gramm, a major advocate for de-regulation of the financial services industry and thus one of the two men perhaps most responsible for the current economic crisis, is John McCain's chief economic adviser.

Aside from Gramm, Krugman's main scapegoat is Alan Greenspan, who Sen. Hillary Clinton now wants to appoint to a "an emergency working group on foreclosures" to "recommend new ways to confront the nation's housing finance troubles," according to the Associated Press. Barack Obama, like Clinton, has received oodles of money from Wall Street. Krugman says those donors "surely believe that they're buying something in return." Let's hope all three candidates are not as beholden to the financial services industry as they seem.

If Barack Obama accepted the endorsement of a minister who called for eradicating Judaism, praised that minister, and campaigned with that minister, what would the media reaction be? Would Fox News not go nuts over that--especially if there were video? Would CNN and MSNBC not provide plenty of air time to outraged commentators demanding that Obama denounce this minister and reject his support? Would The New York Times and The Washington Post not devote inches of columns to news stories and columns dissecting the relationship between Obama and the minister and use the occasion for big-think articles probing the relationship between blacks and Jews?

With that in mind, let's turn to an exchange between Chris Wallace and Bill Kristol from this Sunday on Fox News:

WALLACE: With all the talk about Obama and Reverend Wright, I got a bunch of email this past week from viewers who said: "Why don't you ever talk about McCain and the evangelical -- some of the evangelical ministers who have endorsed him?" And let's put up a couple of these: Reverend John Hagee, who has called the Catholic Church a "false cult," and Reverend Rod Parsley, who has attacked Islam and said that Allah was a "demon spirit." Do you think it's fair, Bill, to compare McCain's, quote, "ministers" to Obama's pastor?

KRISTOL: No, because these are just individuals who've endorsed Senator McCain. I think, actually, some of the attacks, especially on Reverend Hagee, are unfair. But leaving that aside, no. This would be like attacking Obama because random individuals in the Democratic Party have endorsed him. Obama and Wright have a close relationship. Obama chose, not just to join Reverend Wright's church, but to stay there over 20 years. And that's what hurts him.

Talk about intellectual honesty--or the lack thereof. Kristol is right (to a degree) that the Obama case and the McCain case are different. Obama had a long and personal relationship with Wright (which, depending on your view, might make the matter better or worse). But McCain, out of political expedience, made common cause with Hagee (a well-known anti-Catholic, who called Catholicism the "great whore" and a "false cult system") and with Parsley, who has called for western Christian nations, in particular the United States, to destroy (literally) the "false religion" of Islam. McCain sought and accepted the endorsement of each of these fundamentalist pastors. He campaigned with Parsley before the Ohio primary and called him a "spiritual guide."

Employees and employers are getting squeezed by the price of health care. The struggle to control health costs is viewed as crucial to improving wages and living standards for working Americans. Employers are paying more for health care and other benefits, leaving less money for pay increases. Benefits now devour 30.2 percent of employers' compensation costs, with the remaining money going to wages, the Labor Department reported this month. That is up from 27.4 percent in 2000.

"The way health-care costs have soared is unbelievable," said Katherine Taylor, a vice president for Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union. "There are people out here making decisions about whether to keep their lights on or buy a prescription."

Since 2001, premiums for family health coverage have increased 78 percent, according to a 2007 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Premiums averaged $12,106, of which workers paid $3,281, according to the report.

That massive jump in premiums is one reason why, according the Post, "inflation-adjusted median family income has dipped 2.6 percent -- or nearly $1,000 annually since 2000."

Last night's episode of LOST was the last we'll see until April 24. And it was the last written before the infamous strike. Will there be a difference between pre-and post-strike shows? We can only hope so, as the "Meet Kevin Johnson" episode yesterday felt rushed and ultimately unsatisfying.

The episode takes place almost entirely in flashbacks, a trademark of the series. The flashbacks, which reveal critical stories from characters' pasts, have been an easy way for viewers to learn more about characters and their motivations in the present. But some episodes, like last nights', seem to be nearly entirely flash-backs, making it feel contrived and hard to jump back into the present and still remember what's happening. Combine it with the innovative use flash-forwards (which happened in last week's show) and you've got a recipe for confusion in an already complex TV series. Some TV shows and movies (Tarantino's Kill Bill and his inspiration Kung Fu) do flashbacks seamlessly. But it seems to me, when flashbacks start to take up more than 70 percent of an episode, you're asking for trouble.

In last night's flashback, I mean episode, the story of Oceanic flight 815 survivor Michael (aka Kevin Johnson) was interesting, since he was the first Lostie to make it off the island. But it wasn't nearly as fascinating as another character's glossed-over revelation that the alleged remains of Flight 815 found at the bottom of the ocean, were, in fact, planted. But by whom is still a mystery: Bad guy Ben's henchmen say it's industrialist Charles Widmore.

But would Widmore really put his company's real name on a purchase order to buy the same model of plane that crashed? And could a Boeing 777 commercial airliner really cost only $450, as the receipt indicates? To me, that enters the realm of fantasy more than the idea that busy businessman Widmore took 300+ bodies from a Thai cemetery, put them in a plane, and shoved them into the ocean, all so he could hide an island with special powers from the rest of the world.

Another unsatisfying detail of last night's installment was the perfunctory shooting of Danielle, mother of bad guy Ben's daughter, and Karl, boyfriend of said daughter, just before the episode ended. One can only hope the April post-strike episodes will be a bit tidier, since writers got some, er, rest during the five-months they weren't working.

The EPA said last week it would improve air quality by cutting ground-level ozone limits from 80 parts per billion to 75 ppb. This should save thousands of lives a year. Sounds good? Well, according to New Scientist, the EPA's own scientific advisers told the agency last year of overwhelming evidence that an even tighter limit of 70 ppb would save thousands more lives. No go, said the EPA, apparently deciding those other thousands of lives are inconsequential.

Now the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) says the Bush administration wants to overhaul the whole process of setting air-quality controls by allowing political appointees to help draft advisory reports, taking the job away, at least in part, from researchers. New Scientist reports the words of Tim Donaghy of the UCS: "The administration has changed the rules along the way so that when the next administration gets into office, the role science plays in setting regulations will be greatly diminished."

This, by the way, dovetails with a call last month by the UCS for the next president and Congress to end political interference in science and establish conditions allowing federal science to flourish. "Good federal policy depends upon reliable and robust scientific work," said Francesca Grifo, director of the Scientific Integrity Program at UCS. "When science is falsified, fabricated or censored, Americans' health and safety suffer."

The "staff picks" shelf at the record store sucks me in every time. My rationalization: These folks work at a record store, so they must know what they're talking about. Right? Well, we work at a magazine, so, uh...anyway, a few of us here at MoJo decided to compile our own favorites-of-the-moment list. Like it? Super. Hate it? Tell us something better to listen to. Especially if you happen to work at a record store.

We think our picks this week are worth a listen or two. But as LeVar Burton would say, you don't have to take our word for it:

1. "Along the Way," DeVotchKa: Gary saw DeVotchKa perform this song in Austin last week at SXSW, and it's been stuck in his head ever since. Old-world gypsy folk that's pretty and sad at the same time.

3. "Organism," Tommy Guerrero: At a recent live performance in San Francisco, Guerrero and his band drove through songs like this with scary precision. Hip-hop beats + thick, reggae bass lines + funky guitar = Tommy Guerrero.

4. "Zhong Nan Hai," Carsick Cars: We hear tinges of Mission of Burma and the mighty Joy Division in this Beijing band's sound. What do you hear?